July 15, 2013

Tsukesage Kimono: Can You Spot the Design Flaw?

I'm re-posting a link to Ichiroya's Kimono Flea Market ICHIROYA's News Letter No.506 since it's such a great story! The nuances of kimono manufacturing and design never fail to intrigue.

Read more about tsukusage kimono and formality level here.  
The kimono shown below does not have the design flaw...use it for comparison.
A vintage 1970's tsukusage kimono, courtesy of retrotogo.com
Enjoy your Monday!
~Reb

July 7, 2013

Too Freakin' Hot to Wear But There is Always time to Shop!


Stacks of miscellaneous fabrics
Hello Everyone!
We had a record-setting June, with triple-digit temperatures for the entire month. Well, it's still too hot to do anything kimono-related! However, sometimes opportunities present themselves in unexpected ways. A friend forwarded an e-mail from a woman with a collection of kimono and Japanese fabrics she is trying to sell and wasn't sure how to find buyers. We had been e-mailing back and forth and I finally went to see her collection a couple of weeks ago. Luckily, everything was extremely well-organized, with items arranged by color on shelves in neat rows. She had a ton of fabric period; too bad it wasn't all kimono items!


Stacks of haori and kimono

She was interested in the fabrics and smaller patterns, so she bought inexpensive items by color, so she had many every-day komon kimono, haori, obijime, as well as pieces of obi and kimono to use for craft projects. She bought many items from Texuba, the kimono seller that used to be in Marina Del Ray, CA. Sadly, no furisode, houmongi, obi, obiage, or anything Taisho. However, she did have a few really cute items- especially obijime. Everything still had the original price tags and all of the obijime and haori himo were brand-new, with the original Japanese tags on them.
A pile of obijime
Haori himo still in their original plastic sleeves
I went to her home, surveyed the collection and gave her some pointers on how and where to sell the items. Luckily, she was already set up and selling other stuff on eBay, so that seemed like the perfect way to clear out her excess inventory. She did have a few really nice items such as a nice indigo and white yukata and a post WWII-era komon with a funky modern pattern. These two items were made for tiny people...way too small for me.

Of course, I found a few items for myself, mainly obijime. I did find a super awesome hitoe kimono in a lovely grey, black, navy, gold, and red stripe.
Stripes!! Hitoe!!
I love this color combination

And I managed to find six obijime as well as a haori himo for my orange and green psychedelic haori. 
Six NEW obijime!

New haori himo

Detail of the multi-colored obijime 
Detail of the terracotta obijime
The obijime are pretty awesome. I think I picked out all of the coolest ones. My two favorites are the multi-colored diamond pattern; it has a bit of gold thread in it and the colors look very "southwesty" to me. The other one I love is the navy blue with the orange dots. Sorry my detail photo of that one didn't come out. Strangely enough, everything seems to coordinate! I'm not sure what obi to pair with the kimono, but I will have to play around and post some photos. Or just turn the air conditioner on at 6:00 am (to ensure maximum coolness of course), add a fan or two and put the kimono on! However, it makes me feel hot and sticky just thinking about wearing a kimono right now!
Arigato,
~Reiko (Reb)